Check it – I’m updating another blog along with my roommates Max and Kevin, specifically geared towards the happenings in and around my current residence, a.k.a. Thugz Mansion. It is bound to be a source of entertainment for all ages, but mostly for the ages that are allowed to use swears. It will function as a reminder for our future selves of our antics, perhaps becoming a centerpiece of conversations relating our semester spent in South Central L.A., or in the worst case, as a reminder to our loved ones of our corporal existences should the “Thug Lyfe” get the better of us, serving as a sort of digital tombstone proclaiming for all the see the folly of Max, Kevin, and Freddie.
You can find it here: http://thugzmanse.blogspot.com
Because there are three people writing for this one, expect more updates than this piece of crap!
Coming back to college is always an awkward affair, especially when it comes to people who you weren’t really close friends with. I was at one of our cafeterias on the first day of school today and I saw a girl I sort of knew from down the hall in between bites of stale California roll.
What the HELL are you supposed to do in this situation?
Do you go up to the person awkwardly and be like “Hey how are you doing remember me we established a speaking relationship last year, oh man how was your summer?” This can only end badly for both parties because if “speaking relationship” was the farthest you got, then who gave you the right to escalate that to “interrupt the process of deciding upon a Starbucks’ coffee product in line relationship?” Surely, such gall is simply unacceptable in this day and age.
Kevin told me that he would talk to people he barely knew, and couldn’t get out of the situation without appearing to be an ass. Some girl he barely knew confronted him somehow and they got to talking. He was late to class, but was unable to tear himself away from what essentially amounted to a conversation with someone whose first name he barely remembered. They talked about their summers for what must’ve been an eternity, because nothing makes time drag out longer than a stupid conversation you’ve had before a million times.
This brings me to a tangentially related point – if there’s one thing I hate more than anything else, it’s when people ask “How was your summer?”
What the HELL are you supposed to answer in this situation?
More importantly – what the HELL does the person asking the question expect, besides a curt two-word answer, maximum, before the conversation shifts to other small talk? Do they want you to pull them aside and give them an hour long discussion of all the intricacies of the events of the last three months since you’ve last met? What would they do if it absolutely sucked? Do they change the subject quickly? Do they talk about their summer?
Man forget it. I’m tired of coming up with lame responses to an even lamer question, and I bet you all are too, so I did something about it. Here’s a great little tool to deal with all the tools who ask you that question:
Presenting! The “How was your summer” Magic 8-Ball! Click on it to get a whole variety of various responses to the world’s dumbest question! Next time someone asks you how your summer was, use this handy application to respond!
-f.w.
First things first – I’m changing the format of my journal around. The long weekly updates are killing me, so I’m updating it sporadically with far shorter updates from now on. It’s difficult to sit down and write a big ol’ chunk of text with images every week is all. The rest of the road trip up with Reed and G will be up eventually.
Meanwhile here’s what’s going down. I am road tripping with my family down to LA again to start another riproaring year of school. I am really looking forward to this year because tons of video games are coming out, and that means more sitting around in dark rooms playing with myself than last year! Wait.
Between Seattle and San Fransisco lies a whole plethora of tiny towns with proportional populations. If there’s one thing I see in this particular corridor along I-5 more than anything else, it’s the goddamned infernal “Chopsticks” font. You know – the font with the fake calligraphy brush strokes for English letters, which basically screams “ching chong chinaman pounding on the black keys on the piano with chopsticks” to anyone reading it. There are very few things in this world that make me furious, and “Chopsticks” is one of them. Cities with populations of people who aren’t racially retarded would probably run the owners of such establishments out of town.
Put it this way – if I had a time machine, I’d make finding the guy who invented the “Chopsticks” font and placing my knee squarely into his nutsack my first priority.
Let me tell you, too, us Asian folk ain’t swayed by that freaking font. Any respectable Asian American sees that font, shakes their head sadly, and drives on right past the restaurant, turns immediately into the liquor store next door, purchases a bottle of Jack Daniels and some rags, and hurls a Molotov cocktail at the establishment and pissing on the ashes as it burns to the ground.
Well, maybe not that extreme, but let me tell you – the only people who see that font and associate it with just delicious Chinese cuisine and blantant idiocy are white folk.
In fact, something about white folk in this particular corridor of the United States strikes me as a bit strange and scares me a bit. When we asked a gas station attendant in Medford, Oregon for any good restaurants nearby, she smiled knowingly, telling us about an all-you-can-eat Asian buffet extravaganza, all but winking and nudging us telling us that’s where we should go if we want some of “our people’s food.”
My dad and mom, perhaps sick of the standard road trip cuisine (that is, Mackers, 3 meals a day) decide on a whim to go. I shout protests from the backseat, because it can’t be a good idea to trust a white, chain smoking Medford gas station attendant’s opinion on “good Asian cuisine.”
The Tin Tin Buffet, which we find after a little searching based on the clues given to us by the station attendant, is tucked into a corner of a massive strip mall. As I enter through the extra wide double doors. I quickly learn that they’re extra wide for a reason – because the entire establishment is chock full of the fattest white folk I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
They attack the buffet lines with the ferocity of a herd of cattle, ambling from lane to lane, perusing the deep fried wares, nodding approvingly as they pile their plates high with fried starches and sweet and sour everything. “Take all you want,” a sign invites, “But eat all you take.”
From the looks of things, that is not a concern. I cannot fathom how many corners were cut to put this much volume of food for nine bucks a person. The chef must be like a neurotic kindergarten girl with a pair of rounded Fiskars, a pile of construction paper, and some bizarre deep seated psychological need to make rounded rectangles.
Jimmy points out, too, that there is nothing that screams authentic Asian cuisine like jell-o and onion rings in the buffet tables. Observe:
“Well,” I tell him, “At least they didn’t use the fucking Chopsticks font.”
-f.w.
